


Sail On Through

by ShibaScarf



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol, Fluff, M/M, booster is a cuddler when he drinks, ted doesn't mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 15:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4143444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShibaScarf/pseuds/ShibaScarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Booster is an affectionate, happy drunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sail On Through

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited/Unbeta'd/Written in the course of a few hours so oh well  
> AMAZING FANART FOR THIS FIC CAN BE FOUND HERE: http://boogerbuttle.tumblr.com/post/121780694577/i-read-shibascarfs-fic-and-i-died-so-i-wanted-to

Booster is an affectionate, happy drunk. Ted finds this out only a few months after they’ve been introduced, when they’re in France and sharing a cheap bottle of wine while watching Eurovision in Ted’s room.

They’re sitting on the floor, in front of the bed, watching as the performer from Sweden sings a song called “Bra Vibrationer” as dancers dressed as mimes gesticulate and groove in the background. Ted’s television is tiny, but neither of them are sober enough to care.

“Stuff like this,” Ted says, passing the bottle over to Booster while he gestures towards the spectacle on the television, “is why we fought for independence in the first place.” Booster hiccups and finishes off the bottle in one long swig.

“Nah,” he replies, setting the bottle down between the two of them and leaning back to rest his back against Ted’s bed. “It was a taxation thing, wasn’t it? I mean, in addition to some of the stuff from the…” Booster waves his hand in the air in a circular motion, as if expecting Ted to provide the answer. “The war. The one with Canada. French and… Native American? French and Indian.”

“How the fuck do you know that,” Ted says flatly. He picks the wine bottle up and looks inside, as though he’ll magically find that it’s full again. “Do you even need to learn about that in the future? Isn’t there some kind of global international conglomerate to learn about instead?”

“Hey,” Booster protests, “I was a History major in college.” 

This, predictably, turns into a drunken argument about the merits of studying the liberal arts instead of more practical things like engineering and ends with Booster smugly claiming that events that have not yet happened but will happen will prove his point for him, despite the fact that he can’t reveal any specifics because of the time stream. It is Booster’s favorite drunken defense and has served him in almost any argument, largely because it is completely unable to be proved or negated in any way.

The argument peters out, and Booster decides he wants to take an afternoon nap to sleep off the wine. Ted helps Booster up off the floor, and as he does so, their faces come close together. Booster wobbles drunkenly, shoots Ted a brilliant smile, and kisses him. It’s a chaste, quick kiss, and it misses Ted’s mouth by a few inches. The whole thing happens so quickly that Ted is almost unsure if he imagined it, especially because Booster then wanders clumsily out the door as if nothing has happened.

Later that evening, everything seems normal, and Ted pushes the incident to the back of his mind.

——————

He eventually discovers, over the process of months and years, that Booster is simply a very, very affectionate and cuddly drunk. Kisses themselves are few and far between, and usually only happen if Ted gets his face too close to Booster’s after a session of heavy drinking (and tend to be on the cheek). More frequent are hugs or pats on the back. Booster’s favorite seems to be resting his head on Ted’s shoulder, and he sometimes even dozes off in that position. All of it seems platonic in nature, like the kind of physical gestures that family members might exhibit towards one another. Sometimes Ted remembers that Booster doesn’t really have any family, not anymore, and he’s always more inclined to let Booster hang on him upon considering this fact.

It only ever happens when the two are alone, anyhow, so it never becomes a point of teasing or source of embarrassment when it comes to the rest of the team.

Until.

Until, of course, it inevitably is revealed in a public and mortifying manner.

Fire, Ice, Guy, Booster, and Ted are all playing “Never Have I Ever” on an especially slow night while they wait for for J’onn to contact them. It’s a stake-out mission, and they’ve been sitting around in the hotel room for almost twenty-four hours now, waiting for their target to move.

They can’t risk drinking while on the job, so instead they’re using pennies to mark drinks. Guy reasons that they can all do shots afterwards. The lack of alcohol would have made the game less fun, but now that they’re all low on sleep, they’re all approaching drunken levels of sleep deprivation. It all evens out.

“Never have I ever…” Tora begins, eyes trailing around the room. “Oh, this is hard! I’m not good at this.”

“Just say something,” Bea grumbles. She currently has the most pennies, with Guy just behind her. Tora, of course, has the fewest, although Booster has been cheating the entire game by constantly bringing up things he never had to do in the future (like vaccines or kindergarten) and forcing everyone to take a penny every round. Ted evens the playing field by listing various product merchandising he has not taken part in every time it’s his turn.

“Never have I ever kissed someone of the same gender, outside of my family,” Tora says finally.

Bea swears and takes a penny, but everyone is taken aback when Guy reaches forward and takes one from the center pile as well.

“Things are different in space,” he snaps, leaning back in his chair.

Ted sheepishly reaches forward to take a penny, and Booster laughs.

“Oh, shut up,” Ted hisses. “You have to take one too.” He grabs an extra one and slides it to him.

At this, Bea begins making scandalized “oooooh” noises, and Booster blushes a bit.

“I was drunk,” he starts to say defensively, and then realizes how it sounds and buries his face in his hands.

“Oh my goodness,” Tora says, eyes wide. “I’m terribly sorry! I didn’t mean pry into your personal lives! I just couldn’t think of anything else.” Booster makes a miserable sound and refuses to look up.

“It didn’t mean anything,” Ted says, exasperated. “It never does. He’s just like that when he drinks. I’m sure he’d kiss anybody.” Booster lifts his head and opens his mouth to speak–

Thankfully, mercifully, J’onn interrupts them with news that their target is moving and appears to have planted a bomb somewhere in the ballroom downstairs. The game is quickly forgotten altogether, pennies left in piles on the table in the hotel room.

————–

It dawns on Ted, after a few months, that he and Booster haven’t been drinking together since the incident. They used to do this at least once a week. It’s not that Booster is seeing any less of Ted. He still comes over for movies and hangs out with him. They still banter and pull pranks. Booster simply defers from drinking, making small excuses and even sometimes bringing over something else entirely to drink, like the carbonated water that Ted can’t believe Booster can stomach.

At first, Ted reasons that Booster must be feeling awkward from the whole hotel room incident. This makes sense, of course. Booster is embarrassed that he gets so cuddly when he drinks, so he doesn’t want to drink anymore.

But then Ted begins to worry that Booster doesn’t mind being an affectionate drunk at all. Maybe Booster is embarrassed that he kissed Ted in the same way that a person might regret a drunken hook-up. Booster is, frankly, movie-star-level gorgeous. Ted is… Ted.

A few days after this, Ted realizes that he’s obsessing over the whole thing, and this is largely because he actually misses the physical contact. He’s so used to getting hugs and shoulder snuggles and even kisses from Booster on a regular basis that he catches himself leaning closer to Booster when they sit next to each other on the couch.

Just a few more days later, Ted almost reaches for Booster’s hand while they’re in the movie theater. 

The pieces click into place. 

—————

Ted is not romantically skilled by any stretch of the imagination and especially not when it comes to his best friend. He spends a few miserable weeks waiting for the right moment to emerge and trying to figure out exactly what to say or how. Somehow, “Hey, remember all those times you got drunk and kissed me? I think we should do it sober and for real,” just doesn’t sound right.

In the meantime, Booster goes out on a few dates with models, as he usually does. This drives Ted crazy, so he generally spends those nights in the garage, working on the Bug and trying not to think about Booster’s stupid perfect body and brilliant smile.

Friday night is one of these nights, and Ted is in the middle of making more coffee in the communal kitchen when Booster walks into the room looking tired and exceedingly handsome in a suit and tie.

“It’s only ten thirty,” Ted says in surprise, checking his watch (partially in an effort to not stare longingly at Booster). “Bad date?”

“Terrible,” Booster sighs, walking over to the cabinet and pulling out a mug. He leans over the kitchen island, turning the mug in his hands as he waits for Ted to finish filling his own thermos and pour some for Booster. “She was boring as hell. Didn’t get any of my jokes but laughed anyway. Then she ate something garlicky at dinner and jumped me in the taxi on the way home.”

Ted is infinitely grateful that he can turn away and set the coffee pot back into the machine so that Booster doesn’t have to see his face for that last sentence.

“Oh well,” he says, forcing a smile. “At least you’ll never have to see her again.”

“She has my number,” Booster says glumly. “I’m sure she’ll call for a few weeks until she gets the message.”

“Well, someone’s full of himself,” Ted remarks, arching an eyebrow and walking back over to lean against the opposite side of the island. “Bit presumptuous, isn’t it? It’s entirely possible that she won’t even give you a second thought, if the date was that awful.”

“No woman can resist the Gold Standard,” Booster says with mock weariness. “It is a blessing and curse. One smooch is all it takes, and then they’re smitten.” He takes a long sip of his coffee, and Ted screws up all of his courage during the momentary lull in the conversation.

“Worked on me,” Ted says, and his voice cracks a little, which is mortifying. His face is burning, so he knows he must be bright red.

“Um,” says Booster, eyes wide. He sets his mug down on the island counter top with a loud clink. Ted puts his hands up and is about to deliver the most panicked backpedaling of his life, but Booster reaches over, grabs him firmly behind the neck, and kisses him fiercely.

It’s too impromptu a kiss to be anything but a quick mashing together of lips, but it’s a relief and a revelation all at once. Ted scrambles over the kitchen island, pushing the coffee mug out of the way to sit on the edge in front of Booster. They kiss again, still urgent, and now Ted can run his hands up to cup the sides of Booster’s face. Booster’s lips are soft and warm, wet and tasting clearly of coffee. There’s just a hint of the aftertaste of wine, and Ted can’t help but think of that first kiss between the two of them, all those years ago. Ted’s legs are dangling a few feet above the floor. It’s surreal. It’s perfect.

They break apart at the sound of a startled, feminine squeak. Tora is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, holding an empty bowl. 

“I came in here for popcorn,” she says, turning pink all the way up to the tips of her ears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to walk in on anything.” She turns and practically runs away.

Ted and Booster watch her leave in silence for a moment, before turning to look at each other. 

It is impossible to resist bursting into laughter. They guffaw until Ted can feel tears coming out of his eyes and his stomach cramping. He rests his forehead against Booster’s, panting and still fighting off giggles. Booster grins back up at him.

“Does this mean,” Ted says finally, while he tucks a strand of Booster’s hair back, “that we can go out for beers tomorrow night?”

“Oh, God, please,” Booster says desperately. “It’s been months now.”

“You’re an idiot,” Ted tells him, and the words come out with a fondness that surprises even him.

“We’re both pretty terrible,” Booster agrees, and then he’s kissing Ted again, soft and sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> That was an actual Eurovision performance, btw.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CtJ3LGoyKQ


End file.
